As you’re also no doubt aware, you can go right over the border and buy enough fireworks in Pennsylvania to put on a show to rival the Grucci brothers.

And so, a valid question: What happens when you get caught with fireworks?

Usually a fine, it seems.

But sometimes …

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*****

Joe Attilio is a Hamilton resident and assistant principal at a New York City high school.

Dave Bothem is a West Windsor resident who owns his own contracting firm.

And both men ended up on the TSA no-fly list.

I’ll let them tell you why …

JOE: We were having friends over for a July 4 party. We live on Arena Drive. My wife, Jenn, told me I should “live a little.” So I went over the bridge to Pennsylvania and bought two dozen bottle rockets.

DAVE: There were also mortars. We were shooting them off. (“Mortars” are slang for artillery shells, which sounds worse than it is. It’s a cardboard and paper ball you light and it shoots up into the sky and … fireworks. Anyway, back to the story. I won’t interrupt again.)

JOE: We saw there were cops in the area, and then next thing I know, there’s police in my backyard.

JENN VITELLA (Joe’s wife): The neighbors called the cops.

DAVE: There was a third cohort. He took the rest of the mortars to the basement. All Joe had was bottle rockets. The cops asked where the fireworks were. Joe’s wife played stupid.

JENN: I guess it was my fault. I made the cops mad. I said, “What fireworks?”

JOE: The cops told me and Dave to come to the front of the house. They wound up handcuffing us, taking us to the station, and then handcuffing us to a pipe.

DAVE: They asked Joe what he did for a living. When he said, “assistant principal,” I couldn’t stop laughing.

JOE: We were there for about six hours.

DAVE: Joe’s wife had to bail us out.

JOE: That Monday, we go to the courthouse. You kill someone or get a parking ticket, you go to court. So I’m waiting to hear if anyone there did something worse than us.

DAVE: We got called first. Figured it would a quick slap on the wrist and that’s that.

JOE: The judge said we were charged with an indictable offense and our case was sent up to the state. That didn’t sound good.

DAVE: So we went to Trenton to find out what we were charged with.

JOE: We ended up in a clerk’s office. Not only helpful, but had a sense of humor. He put the info into his computer, looked at us, looked at the computer, and asked us what we did.

DAVE: We told him we set off a bottle rocket.

JOE: He kind of half-laughed and turned the screen. We were being charged with the sale, manufacture and transport of explosives. I thought that was a little extreme. I lit a bottle rocket. Yes, I broke the law, but …

DAVE: Our jaws hit the floor.

JOE: I couldn’t understand the charge. Even if I had a grenade launcher, I didn’t sell, manufacture or transport it anywhere.

DAVE: A few weeks later, I tried to buy airline tickets. I had a wedding at the end of the summer. That’s when I found out we were on the no-fly list.

JOE: It was a year-long process. This was back in 2009. Dave got a lawyer, and I piggybacked onto him.

DAVE: I wanted a trial. No way a jury was going to convict us.

JOE: During the process, we had to go to court a few times. The state sent it back to Hamilton. They knew they couldn’t prosecute this. It got to the point where they wanted us to pay $3,000 and do six months in county jail.